Cloth rolls when employed in connection with take-up apparatus of the type usually positioned in front of the loom utilizing a pair of parallel spaced rolls, are normally built to very large sizes, and often weigh on the order of two thousand pounds. The doffing of such heavy rolls requires special lifting mechanism with personnel assigned to utilize such equipment. The doffing apparatus of the present invention makes possible the doffing of the large cloth roll by regular personnel in a manual operation. The doffing equipment is simple in construction and design and requires little maintenance.
Accordingly, it is an important object of the present invention to simplify the doffing of large cloth rolls by use of inexpensive manually operated doffing mechanism.
Another important object of the invention is the provision of a doffing apparatus with few moving parts which is manually operable only at the time the doffing operation is required for removing cloth rolls into carts for removing the cloth rolls for subsequent finishing operations.
Still another important object of the present invention is to reduce equipment cost and maintenance while making it possible for regular weaving personnel to carry out the doffing operations related to very large loom cloth take-up rolls.
Apparatus has been employed heretofor which utilized fluid operated cylinders in connection with the doffing of the large rolls such as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,286,944. Such devices require the use of power operated mechanism and in the device illustrated in the patent, it is necessary to first remove the roll from the take-up or winding mechanism. The apparatus of the present invention on the other hand, removes the cloth roll from the take-up rolls.